Granada
       

To be so far from oxtail stew, sardines
in garlic sauce, blood oranges in pails
along the avenida, midday heat
wetting necks and wrists; to be so stuck
in stone-thick ice and clouds and recall
the pomegranate we shared, its hardened peel,
the translucent membrane gently parting
seed from luscious crimson seed, albedo
soft beneath bald rind, acid juice
running down our fingers, knuckles, palms,
the mild chap of our lips from mist and flesh;
so far away from that, and still
the tangy thought of pomegranates
crowning coats-of-arms and fortress gates
like beating hearts prepared to detonate
their countless seeds across Granada,
ancient town of strangled rivers
and nameless bones in every desert hill...
In Spain, said Lorca, the dead are more alive
than any other place on earth. Imagine, then,
the excavation of his unmarked grave
like the quick pull on a grenade's pin,
and the sound that secrets make
as they return from that other world
of teeth and blood and fire.

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Copyright © 2011 Joanne Diaz All rights reserved
from The Lessons
Silverfish Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission